Monday, December 12, 2011

Peace Caucus Training On December 13

From the in box, Jeff Cox has the following:

Nonpartisan Peace Caucus Training On December 13

Iowans who plan to vote for peace at the presidential caucuses will hold a Nonpartisan Peace Caucus Training meeting on Tuesday, December 13, 7 p.m., Iowa City Public Library. Sponsored by the Iowa Healthcare Not Warfare Caucus Campaign, the training will focus on caucus procedures at both the Democratic and Republican caucuses to be held on January 3. The Healthcare Not Warfare Caucus Campaign encourages caucus attenders to support delegates at the Democratic caucus who are not yet committed to any presidential candidate, but who support (1) removing all troops from Afghanistan within President Obama's first year in office and (2) the enactment of national health insurance (medicare for all) during President Obama's second term. Others will be in attendance to explain their plans to support a peace candidate at the Republican caucuses.

I'll be on hand to explain Democratic caucus process.

I'm In for the president, and yeah, I have some self interest. I want the Uncommitteds on board with Obama in November. But more than that, I want to be fair in January. These are the Democratic Party caucuses, not the Barack Obama caucuses. The Dems made a big mistake in 1996: there was considerable pressure from outside to report a unanimous Bill Clinton result. We didn't get that in Johnson County. So some results got "delayed" until after the news deadlines, and in effect flushed down the memory hole. After a lot of digging I finally found the real numbers (254 to 5).

That won't be allowed to happen again; results now go straight from the precincts to Des Moines with no intermediate steps. And Sue Dvorsky gets it better than past state chairs have.

Friendly advice: even if Uncommitted is below the magic 15 percent threshold, there are still those platform and committee seats to go for. And you'll make a lot more progress on those platform issues on the Democratic side than you will with the Republicans.